At the most recent edition of Commercial UAV Expo, held earlier this month in Las Vegas, the exhibit floor was the largest in the show's history and showcased a remarkable variety of components, from propellers and batteries to docking stations and parachutes. In short, everything you need to assemble a brand-new drone from scratch.

In the early 1980s, the personal computing industry looked remarkably similar and radically different from the way it does today. There was no dominant PC brand, no universally accepted architecture, and no expectation that a computer would arrive as a finished appliance. The industry was still largely about components and the people who were in love with the technology.

For readers of Byte magazine, which became one of the defining publications of the early PC era, the industry was a vast marketplace of circuit boards, processors, memory, monitors, keyboards, disk drives, and a multitude of other components. Many early computer enthusiasts were builders, assembling systems from individual pieces for personal use.

Then came August 1981.

IBM introduced the IBM Personal Computer, or IBM 5150, and personal computing changed forever, though the company had not invented most of the technology inside the machine. The computer used an Intel processor, Microsoft software, and commercially available components. More importantly, IBM chose an architecture that encouraged other companies to develop hardware and software for it.

The result was much larger than IBM could have anticipated. The IBM PC became a platform and a standard. Companies could build businesses around it. Component manufacturers could specialize. Software companies could develop applications. Other manufacturers could build compatible computers.

The PC industry had moved from a collection of components to an ecosystem. More than four decades later, the commercial drone industry looks surprisingly familiar.

Walking Around Commercial UAV Expo 2026

Anyone who walked through the exhibit hall of Commercial UAV Expo a few weeks ago could easily be reminded of an early-1980s computer show. Instead of processors and memory boards, the booths are filled with motors, electronic speed controllers, batteries, propellers, flight controllers, cameras, thermal sensors, lidar systems, GNSS receivers, communications equipment, autonomy software, docking stations, parachutes, airframes and payloads.

Alongside complete aircraft were many companies supplying the specialized technologies that make those aircraft useful. That is not necessarily evidence of an immature industry. In fact, one can interpret it in precisely the opposite way.

An industry becomes industrialized when specialization begins. A computer manufacturer does not need to manufacture every component in its machine. Rather, it needs suppliers capable of producing processors, memory, displays, storage, communications hardware, and other technologies to agreed specifications.

The same process is emerging in drones. A commercial operator may no longer think of a drone simply as an aircraft. It is increasingly a collection of interconnected technologies: an airframe, propulsion system, flight computer, navigation system, communications link, sensors, autonomy software, payload and data infrastructure.

The question is whether those pieces will eventually become a standardized platform. That is where the comparison with the PC becomes particularly interesting, and in a certain way, it diverges.

Erik Mintz wrote extensively about this phenomenon in his trilogy, "Decoding the Drone Industry." In Part 3: Manifesto for a New Era of Aviation, he stated, "The early PC industry saw a proliferation of companies building around the core platform—extending its capabilities with hardware, software, and services. That same pattern is now playing out in the drone industry today. A growing ecosystem of startups and innovators is rapidly expanding the utility of drones, creating a robust and competitive market that’s actively fueling the next wave of technological innovation."

The DJI Difference

However, one enormous difference exists between the early PC industry and today's drone industry.

The PC industry did not have an IBM when IBM arrived. The drone industry already has DJI, and its designs have not become a de facto standard.

DJI has become the dominant global manufacturer of small commercial and consumer drones, and it achieved that position by doing what the fragmented PC industry eventually discovered was enormously valuable: integrating components into a product that simply works.

Today’s customer generally does not want to buy a flight controller, battery, camera, radio, GNSS receiver, and airframe and then figure out how to make them work together. A surveying company wants a system that can collect accurate mapping data, the same way a utility wants a system that can inspect infrastructure, and a public-safety organization wants an aircraft that can quickly provide an overhead view of an incident or an active crime scene.

The value is therefore shifting from the individual component to the integrated system. In that respect, DJI has already delivered something resembling the post-IBM PC experience. That said, the company also reveals what the broader commercial drone industry still lacks: a truly open, universally accepted platform.

IBM's great contribution to computing was not simply producing a successful computer. It helped establish an architecture around which an enormous ecosystem could develop. Intel benefited. Microsoft benefited. Peripheral manufacturers benefited. Software developers benefited.

And eventually, competitors benefited by producing IBM-compatible machines. The value increasingly moved from the computer itself to the ecosystem surrounding it. The drone industry has not completely reached that point.

The Next Drone Revolution May Be About the Platform

Imagine a future in which an operator can combine an airframe from one manufacturer, a flight computer from another, a thermal sensor from a third, autonomy software from a fourth, and a communications system from a fifth, and have all of those components work together without extensive integration.

That would be the drone industry's equivalent of the PC-compatible ecosystem, and it would transform the industry's economics. The component companies exhibiting at Commercial UAV Expo this year would no longer simply be selling parts. They would be supplying interchangeable building blocks for a much larger platform.

That could create drone-industry equivalents of the companies that eventually became enormously important in computing without ever manufacturing a complete PC. However, achieving that kind of ecosystem requires more than engineering. It requires standards, interfaces, communications protocols, data formats, cybersecurity requirements and, perhaps most importantly, regulatory acceptance.

This is where the drone industry has another characteristic that makes its evolution different from personal computing: The PC did not have to convince aviation regulators that its user could operate the machine beyond the operator's visual range.

The transition from today's largely pilot-centric operating model toward routine BVLOS operations could therefore become one of the industry's most important platform moments. Once BVLOS becomes standardized and scalable, the drone becomes less of a remotely controlled aircraft and more of an automated infrastructure system.

That changes the market. Instead of selling an aircraft to a pilot or an operator, companies can begin building systems around persistent inspection, mapping, security, logistics, emergency response, and other recurring operations. The aircraft becomes one component in a much larger system, and that may ultimately be the real IBM moment for drones.

The irony is that DJI has already demonstrated the power of vertical integration, while the rest of the industry is simultaneously developing the specialized components that could make a more open ecosystem possible.

The big question, then, is not simply who will build the next great drone. It is who will establish the architecture around which thousands of drones, payloads, software applications and services can operate. The early PC industry taught us an important lesson: The company that builds the machine that starts a revolution does not necessarily control the ecosystem that follows.

The commercial drone industry may now be approaching its own version of that transition.

From my conversations with Erik Mintz, he did not believe a single industry standard would emerge. In IBM’s case, the company had enormous brand recognition and market power, which helped establish the PC as a de facto standard. While several major brands are involved in the drone industry, it takes a particular combination of market influence, timing, and entrepreneurial conviction for a large company to make the kind of leap IBM made with the PC. Given the diversity of vertical markets, each with its own operational requirements and specialized drone configurations, Erik believed drones would remain far less commoditized than PCs.

As with the PC ecosystem, the building blocks are already everywhere, and the number of specialized suppliers keeps growing. Aircraft are becoming more capable. Software is becoming increasingly important. Regulation is slowly moving toward scalable BVLOS operations.

What is still missing is the universally accepted platform. The next great drone-industry breakthrough may therefore have little to do with another incremental improvement in flight time, camera resolution, or payload capacity. It may be the moment when the industry finally agrees on how all those pieces fit together.

That would be more than another generation of drones. It could mark the beginning of the drone platform era and the commoditization of uncrewed aviation. While commoditization can sound like a negative, in the case of the PC, it helped accelerate an entire industry, expand access, and ultimately deliver enormous benefits to society. Drones could have a similarly transformative impact.